(1) Building Awareness and (2) a poem for worship

For the next several months, we as the NCC Task Force on Immigration will be writing and sending out tangible ways that you can be in advocacy for your immigrant neighbors, right where you live. At best, we feel the urge to be advocates, and we charge headlong into these endlessly deep and difficult waters. At worst, we feel the urging of the Holy Spirit, don’t know what to do, and become despondent, despairing that we can’t or haven’t done anything to help. We have challenged many of you in person to be advocates, and in this space, we are going to give you tangible ways to do that. We hope that you can take these articles we will post and use them. They are meant as starting points, yet they will not give you all of the answers.

These articles we will post will be based off of the 18 unit “Immigration Advocacy Methods for Congregations” table/worksheet, which starts at the top with easy examples of working with churches and building awareness and moves to more difficult examples, of acts of justice and mercy on the governmental level. You can find this table, here at this link.

Also, after the short articles (plus or minus 1,000 words) we will offer a resource that you can use in worship.

Congregational and District-Level Awareness

We live in a polarized world, are tempted to be in our own, ideological bunkers, and are moved to be in “echo chambers” where we only hear our own opinions spoken back to us. Whether we stay online at the websites of the New York Times and Washington Post or whether we leave Fox News playing in the background of our home TVs, we are victims of forces that drive us apart. This is perhaps the type of thing which Jesus said, in order to come out of us, must be dealt with “by prayer and fasting.” One of the most difficult things to do, but one of the most important and vital things we can do is enter into a space of listening to those with whom we differ.

Through relationships with many congregations, we on the Task Force have learned that we earn the right to be heard by others. Yelling, even prophetic shouting across the rift between us, does not help us to be heard. It is just too easy for our disagreeing neighbors to simply turn up the volume of people with whom they agree, ignoring us altogether. Some people have said that the “race dialogue” has been going on for decades. In some ways this is true, but in some ways, it’s false. A dialogue means that both sides listen. What we have had is several monologues. Monologues serve their purposes, and they indeed give us a great dopamine high, when we get affirmed by people like us. We need to listen to our ideological enemies, also – to love and pray for them, even if they spitefully use us.

It seems against common sense, to listen, because we know that it will cause us pain, to hear rhetoric that stabs at what we believe. However, beneath that rhetoric is always pain and suffering. So, in the next few lines, we will offer to you one possible framework of how to start the immigration advocacy conversation with people who are different than you. Here will be a few tangible things to say, attitudes to take, and ways to have the conversation. The result of these conversations, we hope, will be that you can be heard and even invite people alongside you:

1.       Decide who you want to have a conversation with, and pray for that person, praying that you will be able to hear what they have to say and where they are coming from. (remember that if you’re talking with a working class or lower class person, they have probably been the victims of hurtful policies of our Country and may see immigrants as being to blame)

2.       If you are close (and if you will already see them), bring up the conversation when you are together. If you are not, ask if you can sit down and talk, sometime. If they ask why, don’t say that you want to convince them to be advocates for immigration, but say that you want to listen to their opinions and beliefs about it. (Remember, you earn the right to be heard; so focus on knowing their beliefs before making your own known)
In a confidential place, write down a “Top 5 most wanted” list of people with whom you want to talk.

3.       When you meet, please do the following:

         a.       Please begin with prayer, if possible.

         b.      Please ask them what was the earliest memory they have of immigration, and what helped make up their minds. (Chances are, their minds were made up more by people they know than by convincing arguments)

         c.       Please repeat back to them what they said. (If you plan to do this, as soon as you go in there, it will keep you from formulating a come-back or rebuttal, as they are talking)

        d.      Please ask them how they feel about the state of immigration in America. Take some time to digest what they say, before answering. (For many of us, this will be the most difficult part to not break into an argument. So, take a couple of deep breaths, while they are talking, and try to convince yourself that they are doing the best they can, with what they have. Try to believe that their emotions are as deeply embedded as yours)

        e.      Please ask them if they currently know any immigrants by name, in your area, and if they do, ask them if they have heard how the new policies and practices of the Government have made their immigrant neighbors feel. (If they don’t, please come prepared with a story, a local story if you know one, of how the immigration crisis has made immigrants feel).

        f.        Please tell them that before we approach the National policies we want to minister to the people who are in the same parish as us, because this is what it means to be Methodist (and it is also the framework of the table/worksheet we are using). Tell them that in the future you might do things on a bigger scale, but that you are starting with the people in front of you (If this isn’t the case, then be honest about what your intentions are. We don’t want to hurt the trust we are trying to build by doing a “bait and switch”).

        g.       Please Tell them that you are grateful for the hospitality of their story, and that, whether or not they are mad at undocumented immigrants, you hope they will be interested in offering love to them in the future.

        h.      Please close in prayer, and if they are a praying person, ask them to offer the prayer.

4.       Directly after you meet, write down in a confidential place if they are willing to help in ministry with immigrants or not.

5.       Make yourself a reminder to reconnect with this person after a week and thank them for the conversation. Ask them if they would like to talk more. If you can have more conversations, please have them. If God changes the hearts of people, keep track of who is interested in joining the journey of connecting with your Immigrant Neighbors, or whatever you have decided. You can tell people that you want them involved and to at least come and see, even if they don’t agree with you.

6.       Once you have a list of people who are interested, contact them for another meeting and together discuss what you are planning on doing. (It’s important to be honest with everyone and communicate what your intentions are, in a way that they can hear it). As with the short “Building a Movement” video, these people, if convinced, will convince more people than you can.

These conversations should come after you have already identified at least 1-2 other people in your congregation with whom you agree, on the topic of immigration. If you feel it’s appropriate, get one of them to come with you to the meetings with people who disagree. You can keep each other accountable to not getting into an argument. You don’t have to attend every argument to which you’re invited.

A Poem to Share in Church, going along with the Ephesians, Lectionary Passage for the 2nd Sunday in August (and connecting with the theme, if you’re using the UMC Discipleship Worship Series)

Lord, like a locked and licked envelope, together we in the Church are sealed. And yet our pains envelop us and instead of wanting to be healed, we put up a shield. We are in this together, but apart we try to be peeled. Like a broken envelope, we leave behind parts of ourselves, when our differences are revealed. We lose the Love letter of God that was on and in our hearts concealed.

One of us sees an illegal, cheating immigrant and another of us sees an ill Eagle eating the innocent. We are split on so many things, but especially in how the discussion of immigration stings. We need to cling to you and each other, in this and whatever else life brings, so we can again mount up on Eagle’s wings. But that ain’t always what our hearts sing or the ideas that the King’s of this world bring. We’ve been enticed to use words against each other that sting.

When we feel hurt by each other’s ignorant belief, we want to take our souls back, to be a thief. At the very least, we seek for our time by them at the Communion Table to be brief, like a shark and a dolphin briefly passing at the reef. And in so doing in being our own chief, we cause the Holy Spirit, who would bring us together, grief.

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger,” because the Lord who frees you from your cage is the anchor.

“Get rid of all brawling and slander, along with every form of malice,” because our callous hearts can be circumcised if we together tarry at the Communion Chalice.

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as through Christ we’ve been forgiven.” Before you opened your heart to listen, before your restored soul was Christened, before on the Third Day He was risen, you were forgiven.

So my fellow stiff-necked sisters and brothers, those afraid of the others, God-lovers afraid of our dwindling numbers, and people of different socio-political colors, let’s not block and walk in the way of love, but let’s “walk in the way of love,” so even in disagreement we will know this Church-thing is from above. Just as “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us,” let’s be just and give our up egos, the parts that won’t let us listen to a neighbor and yield. Let’s give up and forgive up for Christ, so that we can be healed, be on the same playing field, and together be sealed.